Ashley Finley

Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs & Dean of the Dominican Experience and Senior Fellow, AAC&U, Dominican University of California

Dr. Ashley Finley is the associate vice president of academic affairs & dean of the Dominican Experience at the Dominican University of California and the national evaluator for the Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) Project. Previously, she served as the senior director of assessment and research at AAC&U. Finley’s national work, at both the campus and national levels, focuses on developing best practices regarding program implementation, instrumentation, and mixed methods assessment. Her work combines assisting campuses with the implementation of assessment protocols and the promotion of best practices across the institution, including general education, academic departments, and the cocurriculum. She is the author of Making Progress: What We Know the Achievement of Liberal Education Outcomes, and Using the VALUE Rubrics for Improvement of Learning and Authentic Assessment, with Terrel Rhodes, and many other articles and book chapters on assessment and student learning. In her work with Bringing Theory to Practice, Ashley worked with campuses to implement and assess programs focused on the intersectionality of emphases attendant to the whole student— their engagement in learning, civic development, and their psychosocial well-being. Before joining AAC&U, she was an assistant professor of sociology at Dickinson College, where she taught courses in quantitative methods, social inequality, and gender in Latin America. As a faculty member she taught courses incorporating high-impact learning practices, such as learning communities and service learning. Finley received a BA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MA and PhD, both in sociology, from the University of Iowa.

Areas of Expertise:

Gender and Social Stratification, Sociology of Education, Program Implementation and Evaluation, Quantitative Methods